Blair: 'worrying gap' between MPs and reality

Tony Blair has told ministers there is a "worrying gap" between MPs "and the reality of the terrorist threat and public opinion", his spokesman has said.

The Prime Minister suffered a devastating blow to his authority last night as Labour MPs helped to inflict the first defeat of his eight-year premiership by decisively voting down plans to detain terrorist suspects for up to 90 days.

Instead MPs backed a rebel amendment to extend the time suspects can be held from 14 to 28 days - less than a third of the time the Government and the police had been asking for.

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The Prime Minister's official spokesman insisted the Government had put its case clearly. He said there was no compromise to be had and no one had offered a rationale for any other period of detention.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, took responsibility for the defeat. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I regret that I got the judgment wrong in terms of the House and the ability to get that position through, and there are lots of issues to be looked at from that point of view.

"But the terrorism legislation right across the range remains, we have got the third reading on it today, with a wide range of different measures."

But Conservatives seized on the defeat as a sign of Mr Blair's waning power.

Michael Howard, the outgoing Tory leader, said Mr Blair's intention to resign as Prime Minister before the next general election meant that he was no longer "accountable to the people".

Asked on BBC2's The Daily Politics whether Mr Blair should resign now, Mr Howard said: "Yes, because I think we have seen yesterday that his authority has disappeared to vanishing point.

Yesterday was an utter humiliation for a prime minister elected with a majority of 66 and losing that key, crucial vote by such a large margin."

Conservative leadership hopeful David Cameron condemned Mr Blair for playing politics instead of acting like a statesmen to protect the country's best interests.

Mr Cameron said the Prime Minister's actions were "deeply and profoundly wrong" and that he would ultimately regret them.

Within an hour of the defeat, a shaken but unrepentant Mr Blair summoned the cameras to No 10 to declare that he had no intention of quitting. He said that public opinion was on his side and that Parliament had "made the wrong decision - the country will think that Parliament has behaved in a deeply irresponsible way".

Asked if he would quit, he said: "Not on the back of this. It is better sometimes to lose doing the right thing than to win doing the wrong thing."

He had made the same comment at Prime Minister's Questions after Labour whips warned him that he was heading for his first Commons defeat since coming to power in 1997.

Mr Blair said it was his duty to support the police, who had asked for a 90-day period to allow them to collect the evidence needed to bring effective cases against terrorists.